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<\/a><\/p>\nGetting out of the motor taxi, we began walking towards a small patch of forest.\u00a0 Slowly the sounds of the motor taxi faded away and were replaced by the chirps and calls of birds.\u00a0 We sat down on a fallen tree and waited and listened.\u00a0 The mosquitoes bit at us as we tried to noiselessly kill them.\u00a0 As always though, the mosquitoes won.\u00a0 We began to hear the calls of pichicos, another species of monkey.\u00a0 These are tiny black monkeys with white around their mouths.\u00a0 We stood up, searching the canopy to see where they were.\u00a0 In the distance I spotted them jumping from tree to tree.\u00a0 Soon, they wound their way right above our heads until they realized our presence.\u00a0 Then, all at once they began screeching an alarm and quickly found an alternative route around us.\u00a0 The more curious ones though, sat at the tops of the trees, cocking their heads back and forth, trying to figure out exactly what we were and if we were friend or foe.\u00a0 While it is always exciting to see animals in the wild, pichicos are very common in this region.\u00a0 While they utilize the same habitat as the titi monkeys, the reason they have been able to thrive in the face of deforestation is because they can come down from the treetops and cross roads and other barriers into more forest.\u00a0 A connected corridor of forest is not as important to them as it is for the titi monkeys.<\/p>\n
Once the pichicos tired of us, they were on their way and so were we.\u00a0 Trampling through more forest, we were more determined than ever to find some titi monkeys.\u00a0 Since we arrived, we hadn\u2019t even heard any vocalizations, a distressing thing, particularly because this patch of forest is often visited by PMT staff to conduct observational studies.\u00a0 I hoped nothing bad had happened to them. \u00a0And then, amid the cacophony of bird calls, we began to hear the distant \u201ctuka tuka tuka\u201d of a group of titi monkeys.\u00a0 Eder turned around and motioned for me to be quiet while we hiked over to where they were \u2013 this of course, turned me into an even more spastic bull in a china shop than usual.\u00a0 Somehow though, my inept crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs didn\u2019t deter our friends.\u00a0 Perhaps they were distracted by a rival group encroaching on their territory; we could hear them calling back and forth.<\/p>\n And then I saw them.\u00a0 High up in the trees, jumping around, and again trying to figure out who and what we were.\u00a0 One of them in particular sat and watched us for a long time, cocking its head back and forth, similar to the pichicos.\u00a0 They looked just like the pictures \u2013 a brownish grey fur with a white ring around their faces.\u00a0 They are bigger in size than pichicos, but still on the small side when it comes to primates. \u00a0We watched them, for what seemed like hours, though was only maybe 20 minutes. \u00a0Eventually though, they tired of us too, and jumped off to more distant treetops, once again blending into the canopy.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n